


Provocation

by LittleSpacePrince



Series: Tale Teller's Daily Writing Challenge [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Monologue, i guess?, this is trash and i hate it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSpacePrince/pseuds/LittleSpacePrince
Summary: Prompt:Everyone has a pet peeve. What is your character's and how do they react when someone won't stop doing it?In which there is reflection on the issue of provocation.





	Provocation

Perhaps one may have figured that the incredible Hulk would have been easily riled. One may have figured that pet peeves were plenty in Bruce Banner’s life, but they couldn't have been more wrong. A sustained anger did not equate to a sustained annoyance. His rage had never come from his annoyances. His rage had come from within, an anger with himself, a hatred for what he had become. 

Though those days did seem to be over. These days, life looked better for him. His control did not come from anger, but rather, joy. After all that he had been through, after the isolation and hurt, after the life lived alone, petty things hardly bothered him. He had home. He had family. What was there for him to be mad about? He drew his control over the beast within from the joy that had come bursting into his life after so long spent alone. 

Thought there was still one thing. One thing that made him angry, one thing that was not so easily masked beneath the mantras of good vibes and memories of the good things in his life. There was one thing that couldn't be rid of so easily, one thing that stung more than anything else. 

Provocation. 

People liked to use him. People liked to poke and prod, see how close to the edge they could push him before the strings snapped and he lost control. It was never the act itself that irritated him, never the pokes and prods that got on his nerves. It was the intention behind them. 

Bruce had been designed to be a weapon. A weapon that got a little out of hand, a weapon that they didn't know how to control, but a weapon nonetheless. For the sake of science, he had surrendered himself to becoming such a thing. For the sake of experimentation, for the sake of the greater good. But in the end, he had come to regret it. Of course he had. Who wouldn't regret such grave mistakes? He had damned himself to a life apart, a life where no one saw him as a man, as a scientist, as anything more than a mindless beast making play that he was still a man. 

It was the provocation. Whether it be mind games or violence, pushed mentally or physically, it was always the intention that bothered him. All he had ever wanted was to be seen, not as a weapon, not as some deadly thing to be used against the enemy, not as some mindless beast, but as a man. 

He supposed he'd found that, one way or another. 

Tony Stark was hardly like the others. Sure, he'd poked fun, tried his hand at breaking his will on the Helicarrier, back when all of this Avengers business had started. But never did he insist that Bruce was any less a man. Never did he see Bruce as a barely sheathed weapon, or a time bomb waiting to explode. He saw him as scientist, a genius, a friend, a lover. He saw him as a man. And never any less.

Provocation would be the death of him. But Tony would forever be his revival.


End file.
